


darling, so it goes

by acreatureofhope



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College AU, F/M, I'm not even remotely sorry, also this is a slow burn mostly, coffee shop AU, i hate that trope, no i'm not going to give ben an annoying girlfriend, so don't worry about that, so prepare yourself, the world always needs more coffee shop aus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6216787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acreatureofhope/pseuds/acreatureofhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wasn't the barista at the coffee shop he frequented.</p><p>No, she was the barista's best friend, the annoying fixture of the coffee shop, perched constantly in the chair closest to the register with her drink sitting half-forgotten on the counter behind her as she and the barista went back and forth. </p><p>He didn't like her. Why, he didn't know, but he didn't like her, and that was the end of it.</p><p>(Otherwise known as another coffee shop AU that doubles as a college AU a little bit too)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The beginning of a new semester was his least favorite time of year.

He was always on campus, always working—being an MD-PhD student didn’t exactly leave a person with a lot of time off—and the summers were always pleasant. They were warm, they were sunny, and, perhaps best of all, they resulted in the departure of the vast majority of the students. All of campus would grow quiet, leaving him the ability to walk down the sidewalk without bumping into someone or to go get a coffee in peace, and when the students returned, so too did his disdain for the vast majority of the human population.

It hadn’t even been a week since classes started, and his patience was already wearing thin as he shouldered his way through the crowds to get to his favorite coffee shop. He usually took a few minutes out of his lunch break to go pick up some caffeine, and he’d found that the coffee shop across the street from the law school was the best place to go. The barista was quick, the coffee was good, and it was less popular than the coffee shop chains that dominated the rest of campus, which meant blessed, _beautiful_ quiet.

He couldn’t even breathe a sigh of relief once he walked inside, though. If anything, he only grew more annoyed.

The usual barista was there behind the counter, so that wasn’t a change, and there wasn’t a line, so he wasn’t going to have to stand and wait. No, the difference was on his side of the counter, and it was one that was sure to drive him mad.

Perched on the seat closest to the counter was a girl that he hadn’t seen before in all the years that he’d been frequenting the coffee shop. She was slender and pretty, her height difficult to gage while she was sitting down, and she was laughing as she explained something to the barista. To anyone else, the sound probably would’ve been warm and inviting.

To him, it just made him want to leave.

“That’ll just be a minute, Ben,” the barista—Finn—said once he reached the counter.

Ben nodded and handed his card over. Finn swiped it without a word and turned his attention back to the girl as he made the espresso for Ben’s drink.

“I tried to tell him that it was a terrible idea, but would he listen to me?” she asked. “No.”

“I’d say that I can’t believe he did that, but that would be a blatant lie,” Finn said. “I don’t know how you put up with it.”

“Neither do I, so I’m just hoping that it’ll last long enough for me to not try to kill him or something. If it doesn’t, we’re going to be in big trouble,” she said. She took a sip from her drink and made a face. “I really need to stop forgetting about these. They really aren’t good once they’re cold.”

“I’ll make you another one once I’m done here,” Finn said. “You still good for dinner with Poe and me tomorrow night?”

Ben couldn’t stop his head from turning slightly at that question. He’d known Poe Dameron since the two were children—their parents were friends, and Poe was only a couple of years younger than he was. He’d known that Finn and Poe had been dating for the last few months after being friends for a while, but Poe had never made any mention of a girl when he and Ben spoke (which had admittedly become a rarity in and of itself, but still).

“Obviously,” the girl said. “Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know, you might have had a shift or something,” Finn said. He passed Ben a cup and flashed a smile. “Have a nice day, Ben.”

Ben raised his cup in Finn’s direction in a gesture of farewell before he made his way out of the store. He could feel a headache forming as he shouldered his way through the crowds back to the lab where he spent most of his time, and the first thing he did upon reaching the air-conditioned room where most of the lab staff took their lunch was toss back a couple of ibuprofen.

He didn’t know where it was that this girl had come from, or why he had never seen her before if she was as close to Finn and Poe as it seemed from their statements, but what he did know was that he wasn’t exactly a fan. She was too… Well, he didn’t know what she was too much of, but it bothered him more than he would care to admit.

He didn’t like it when things changed, didn’t like it when people intruded on that which he considered his, and to have her suddenly appear in such a noticeable way was something that he wasn’t comfortable with. He knew most of the regulars at the coffee shop after his routine trips over the last few years, and she wasn’t one of them.

His uncle was in the lab when he returned to his station, glancing over the work of everyone who shared the space, and Ben nodded a greeting before he went to work. He didn’t doubt that Luke was going to come over and talk to him, but there was no reason why he couldn’t get some work done in the meantime. His dissertation waited for no one, and he’d already been working on it long enough. The sooner it was finished, the sooner he could move on to his two years of clinical rotations and then residency.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes after he sat down, Luke made his way over. Ben didn’t glance up as his uncle took a seat on the stool next to his, too intent on the Petri dish that he was examining.

“How’s it going?” Luke asked.

“It’s going,” Ben said. “I’ve got a few more cultures to look at, but then I’ll be done for the day.” He set the dish that he was holding down on the tabletop and picked up another. “Sometimes I feel like this is a massive waste of time.”

“It’s not,” Luke said. “Not for you, anyway.” He paused for a moment. “You look like something’s bothering you.”

“Headache,” Ben said, though his mind flashed to the dark-haired girl from the coffee shop.

Luke nodded, the movement registering in Ben’s peripheral vision. “Well, like you said, you’re almost done. Go home, eat something, and do it all again tomorrow. Such is the life of a PhD student.”

“It’s miserable,” Ben said.

Luke chuckled. “So it is.” He stood up then, resting his hand on Ben’s shoulder for a moment. “Go home and get some rest once you’re done here. That’s what—”

“What keeps me healthy, I know,” Ben said. “You know, for an epidemiologist, you put an awful lot of stock into old adages about those sorts of things.”

“It’s difficult to argue with the idea that an adequate amount of rest helps to keep your body at an optimal level of function,” Luke said. “Some things are fiction born out of fiction, Ben. Other things are born from truth. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He walked away without waiting for a goodbye, leaving Ben to his research, or perhaps more accurately, to research plagued by the sound of the girl’s laugh playing in his mind over and over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's another coffee shop AU. No, I'm not sorry.
> 
> Chapters will be getting longer as we go, so don't think that everything is going to be this short. I'm not capable of short.
> 
> Also, slow burn. I like slow burn. I don't know why, since I read most slow burn fics and go "JUST KISS ALREADY," but hey.
> 
> (And before anyone asks: I'm working on the next chapter of _don't let your mind speak louder than your heart_. It's a difficult story to write from an emotional perspective because I have to look a lot at my own personal timeline in order to get into the right head space, so I decided to jump on something that's fun while I stew over it.)


	2. Chapter 2

Much as his body complained about the lack of decent caffeine, Ben avoided the coffee shop for the better part of three days. Much as he loved everything he bought at Corellian Coffee, it just wasn’t worth the headache that he got when he went in.

By the fourth day, though, the headache that persisted from the absence of his usual Shot In The Dark (one cup black coffee plus a shot (or four) of espresso) began to feel even worse than the one he’d developed following his visit earlier that week. He didn’t really want to go and face the inevitable rush of students, but the pounding in his head was very demanding, and the only way to answer it was to go buy a drink and hope for the best.

He couldn’t help but silently beg whatever being there was in the universe—not any god, he didn’t believe in a god, but whatever celestial body might happen to govern things—for the absence of anyone but the barista. For that matter, he didn’t really care who was there as long as that girl wasn’t.

Of course, the first thing he heard upon walking through the door was the sound of her voice—the universe so loved punishing him—and he nearly turned around and left. The allure of caffeine was too strong, though, and he closed his eyes for a moment before stepping up to the counter.

“It’s only been a week and Thad has already managed to set something on fire in lab,” the girl said. “A week, Finn. A week. We’ve had lab _once_.”

“Were you really expecting anything less?” Finn asked as he began to make Ben’s drink. “Didn’t he set the same thing on fire four times in one day last semester?”

“Unfortunately,” she said. “I don’t know who told the idiot that being a chemistry major was a good idea, because he causes more problems than he solves.” She took a sip from her drink and shook her head. “And knowing him, he’ll wind up working with fireworks or something and then he’ll really be destroying things.”

Finn laughed. “Just hope you wind up in a lab as far away from him as possible.”

“Oh, I already do,” she said. “There’s some constant begging of the universe going on over here.” She made a face. “He’s perfectly nice, he’s just…”

“Unnecessarily clumsy and not at all concerned with details?” Finn asked.

She nodded. “Precisely.”

“You’ll be done with him after next year, at least,” Finn said as he traded a full cup for Ben’s debit card. “Did anyone manage to do anything idiotic in lab when you were in college, Ben?”

Ben’s eyes widened, and he took a ship of his coffee before speaking. “Sorry?”

“I just figured that an MD-PhD student would have some story about something stupid that someone did,” Finn said. He glanced at the girl. “By the way, Rey, this is Ben. He’s one of the regulars. Ben, this is my friend Rey.”

“It’s really nice to meet you,” Rey said, offering Ben a smile.

He nodded his head once. “Yeah.”

Her smile faltered slightly at that, and he watched as she looked at Finn, who shrugged. Her face fell, and she turned her attention back to her drink without looking at Ben again.

At one point, there probably would’ve been a part of him that cared about the fact that she seemed bothered by his actions, but he’d spent so long caught up in his work and trying to get through his day-to-day existence that he didn’t really spare much thought for the happiness of those around him. His attention was better spent focusing on how best to finish everything there was for him to do, because there was certainly plenty of it.

It was something that his mother chastised him for on the rare occasions that he deigned to talk to her. Much as he loved her (and his father), things between them had been awkward ever since—needless to say, they didn’t speak much, and he knew that she got most of her information on him from Luke.

Really, things with Luke were strained too, but the older man was just so _settled_ that he hadn’t seemed to be particularly phased by Ben’s decision that he needed to do something with his life. His uncle’s willingness to take things as they came was something that Ben didn’t really understand, but he didn’t bother to ask either. Luke would just give him some sort of lecture about how “the universe knows what it’s doing” and “we only have so much control over what happens around us.”

That was easy for Luke to say. His existence was in order. He didn’t have to think about the mundanities of everyday life in the way that Ben did.

Ben shook his head slightly at the thought, only to realize that Finn was looking at him. He raised his cup and nodded. “I’ll see you, Finn.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Finn said.

Taking a sip of his drink, Ben turned on his heel and made his way to the door. As he stepped outside, he heard Rey’s voice.

“What’s his deal?” she asked.

“Hell if I know,” Finn said. “He’s always been like that.”

The door swung shut, cutting off the sound of their conversation. Before they could wonder why Ben was standing there, he started off down the sidewalk.

He didn’t know why she cared. She didn’t have a reason to. They didn’t know each other—Finn introducing them didn’t count—and he clearly wasn’t interested in being friendly, so there was no sense in her taking anything personally. It appeared that she didn’t think of things in the same way that he did, though, or she wouldn’t have bothered to ask.

As perplexing as she was, the coffee was enough to cut through his headache, and when he sat down to continue his work once he returned to the lab, he had no difficulty focusing.

Things wound down around him as he worked, the other doctoral students and researchers cleaning up their lab stations and trading their lab coats for sweatshirts and jackets denoting their allegiance to this sports team or that college.

One of his fellow PhD students paused as she followed a few of the others out the door, resting her hand against the door frame. “Ben?”

He glanced up at her, his hair falling into his eyes. “Is there something I can do for you, Marilyn?”

She was watching him, a strange look in her eyes, and after a moment she shrugged. “Lex and Tony and I are going out to the bar with a few of the other guys now. You’re welcome to join us if you want to.”

He glanced back down at the notes and slides he had in front of him, only to look back over his shoulder at her. “No, I need to finish up here.”

“If you’re sure,” she said.

“I am,” he said.

She nodded then, reaching up to brush a lock of dark hair behind her ear, and then she was gone like the others, the door shutting behind her with a quiet _click_.

He was alone then, the lab silent save for the sound of his pen scratching across the paper and the occasional _clink_ of the slides as he put one on the microscope or settled it back in its box. That was when he did his best work, alone in the quiet, and he remained there for the better part of an hour before he put everything away and left the lab, careful to lock up on his way out.

His apartment was dark and quiet when he pushed the door open a while later, as he’d neglected to open the curtains before he left that morning. Technically speaking, he neglected to open the curtains every morning, but it seemed like a waste of time when it was dark outside anyway.

It wasn’t dark then though, and the idea of leaving the apartment in the gloom was suddenly unappealing, so he slid the curtains open in the living room. Beams of sunlight fell through the windows to illuminate the dust in the air and the dark leather sofa that sat opposite the television. The sofa was the second-nicest piece of furniture in the apartment (after his bed), something that he’d chosen with careful intention, but as he looked at it then, he couldn’t help the strangeness curling about in his chest.

It had made sense when he’d bought it after college, back when there had been people in his life that he’d spent time with, when he’d had friends who came over, but things had changed since then. Work had swallowed his life, made it so that there was only one thing that he really thought about, and it wasn’t until then, standing in his empty living room, that he realized something was wrong.

What it was, he wasn’t quite sure, and how to fix it remained to be seen as well, but the fact remained that for the first time in years, he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing anymore.

He didn’t know who to blame for the realization, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things should start getting longer next chapter—setup takes me a little while and I think I'd go just as nuts as you guys (if not more) if I were writing ten pages of Ben Solo's internal dialogue, so we're keeping things short. Once he's actually talking to more people, chapters will be longer than this (twice as long, probably, if not longer. I like to have 3000+ word chapters when possible). 
> 
> Before anyone worries, Marilyn isn't going to become his girlfriend, I promise (I get annoyed with stories where that happens unless they're done in a very specific way). I don't know if she's even going to be making many more appearances (though now that I've created her, she might have to). At the moment she's just a convenient plot device.
> 
> Also, did I write about Ben Solo while drinking tea out of a mug with Kylo Ren on it? Possibly. No regrets.
> 
> (And s/o to me for not making it Jakku Java. We don't need every coffee shop AU to feature that store.)


	3. Chapter 3

Much as his head hated him for it, much as he missed his Shot In The Dark, much as the days became even longer and more monotonous without his coffee break, Ben spent the next several weeks avoiding Corellian Coffee. Life wasn’t the same without his caffeine fix, but he didn’t need annoying undergraduates asking questions about him. He had enough to worry about without people prying into his private life.

At least, that was what he told himself until the day that he was _asked_ —and by asked, he meant forced, because the head of the biology department at the university never just _asked_ —to cover a section of Biology 0100 while the professor was at a conference. One annoying undergraduate was nothing compared to a room containing one hundred and twenty of them, and after the lecture, his need for caffeine outweighed the disdain he felt at the prospect of having to listen to Rey jabber on while he waited for his drink.

To his surprise, the coffee shop was quiet when he entered it, save for the steady hum of the machines behind the counter. Rey sat in the seat she’d occupied the last two times he’d seen her, but she wasn’t saying anything. Instead, she was bent over what looked like homework, and she didn’t look up at the sound of the door closing behind him.

When he looked away from Rey, it was to see that a girl that he didn’t recognize stood in Finn’s usual place, her black hair pulled up into a ponytail. She smiled at him when he approached the register.

“Hi there,” she said. “What can I get for you?”

“You’re not Finn,” he said.

“He’s sick.”

Ben glanced at Rey, who hadn’t turned around when she spoke, and then looked back at the girl. “Oh.”

“Actually, I think Finn told me about you,” the girl said. “Medium Shot In The Dark, no room, right?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “How’d you—”

“He sent me a list of his regulars and their drinks and a way to identify everyone,” the girl said. “He did say you hadn’t been around in a while, but he wanted me to be prepared.” When Ben did nothing but stare at her, she smiled. “He said some people in this store don’t know their own drinks anymore, so I’d just be better off knowing them all ahead of time. I’m Rose, by the way.”

“Right,” Ben said. Rose stepped back from the counter and began preparing his drink, and it was after the espresso grinder shut off that he spoke again. “Out of curiosity, how did he tell you to identify me?”

“Freakishly tall and usually grumpy,” Rose said. She laughed when Ben shook his head. “I can show you the text if you don’t believe me.”

“No, that’s… fine,” Ben said. He handed her his card and took the drink that she offered him. Once she returned his card, he made his way over to a table in the corner.

Normally he would have left immediately, gone back to the lab and dived back into his work, but after the earlier lecture he couldn’t bring himself to return to his station and the conversations that would surround him. Realistically, he was several weeks ahead of where he needed to be on his research and no one would say anything if he took the rest of the day off. If anything, Luke was always telling him that he needed to take a break every now and then, and Ben taking a half-day was more than acceptable.

At least, that was what he told himself as he sat there and sipped his drink.

Customers came and went, and he watched them all order and decide whether to leave or stick around for a while. The undergrads were easily recognizable, but so too were the law students and the professors. It wasn’t often that he took the time to sit and observe what was going on around him, and for good reason—the groups of students he saw, the professors meeting up for coffee, the joking between friends, just reminded him of what he no longer had.

He was pulled out of his thoughts a while later when Rey made a sound of displeasure. Glancing up, he saw her push her mug away and stare at it with disdain. Rose stepped out from behind the counter and took it, resting her hand on Rey’s shoulder for a moment as she did.

“I’ll get you another one,” Rose said, shaking her head when Rey began to voice a disagreement. “On the house, Rey. Finn says you’ve been working too hard, and I agree with him. Besides, no one wants a drink that’s gone cold.”

“I’m fine,” Rey said, but her voice was quiet, and she didn’t protest when Rose went behind the counter and began preparing her a new drink.

From what Ben could see of her, she didn’t look well. There was a pale cast to her skin and dark circles under her eyes, and she was missing the animated expressions that had adorned her face both times he’d seen her before. She accepted the drink that Rose sent in front of her a minute later with a quiet “thank you,” and she moved slowly as she flipped the page in her textbook.

He knew that look all too well. The years when he was getting his master’s had been marked by it, one day after another of soul-crushing misery as a result of too much to do and not enough time in which to do it, of forcing himself to just keep going and push a little harder because he had to be good enough, had to live up to the legacy that had been left for him, had to make—

Shaking his head, he took another sip of his drink. He still didn’t take time off, didn’t have that “work-life balance” that everyone had always talked about when he was in undergrad, but he didn’t work himself to the bone anymore either. His research was ahead of schedule because he had nothing else to do, not because he forced himself to work harder and longer than anyone else (though he still did).

It was with that thought in mind that he finished his coffee and rose up from his seat. A half-day wasn’t so appealing anymore when he knew that all he would do was return to his apartment and not leave it before bed except to pay one of his semi-regular visits to the gym.

He glanced at Rey one last time after dropping his cup into the trash, but she was still hunched over her work and he didn’t say anything as he pushed open the door and walked out into the late October sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back hahahahaha sorry it took me a year and a half (especially given that we're still in short chapter land). I've been so ridiculously uninspired to write for the last ~year that I really haven't accomplished anything for any of the stories that I'm working on, so you guys aren't the only ones to get an annoyingly long hiatus from me, but all the drama in the fandom also just wasn't conducive to the creative process so I kind of distanced myself from Reylo and Star Wars for a while.
> 
> Of course, the trailer came out and all of the feelings came flooding back, so here we are. I'm not quite done plotting out the rest of this fic yet, but I'm guessing it'll be about twenty-five chapters. I'm up through chapter eighteen on the outline now, so I just have to decide how quickly I want to wrap things up at the end. The fun thing about this taking so long is that Rose gets to make a few appearances now, though, so at least that's something.
> 
> Either way, hope you guys enjoy (if any of you are still around), and thanks for being patient with me.
> 
> Also, I haven't been on my Star Wars Tumblr in a hot minute but that's probably going to change with the movie coming out soon, so you can find me over there at reynoverthegalaxy.


	4. Chapter 4

There was a chill in the air the next time that Ben saw Rey. November had struck with a vengeance, and their usually-sunny town had been blanketed in grey for days. It suited him just fine—he didn’t mind the cold and his only concession to it was turning up the collar on his black pea coat to block the wind as he walked between buildings—but for everyone else on campus, they may as well have been in the Arctic.

Rey seemed even worse than most when Ben stepped into Corellian Coffee on a Tuesday afternoon. She was bundled into what looked to be two sweatshirts, one hand curled around a steaming mug as she bent over her notes, and she shivered every time the door opened—given that it was the lunch rush, it opened a lot, and part of Ben felt almost sorry for her at the look of pure misery on her face.

“Finn,” she called over her shoulder. “What would you use to remove a chloroformate reagent when you’re synthesizing proteins?”

Ben watched in amazement from the end of the line as Finn looked up from his spot at the espresso machine to answer her. “Are we talking benzyl chloroformate or something else?”

“Um…” Rey flipped through her notes. “Shit. I don’t know. I missed that during lecture.” She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. There was a pale cast to her skin beneath her freckles and she rubbed at her eyes before she looked back at Finn. “Out of curiosity, what would it be if it was benzyl chloroformate?”

“It would be—no, that’s for dicarbonate—I think—” Finn looked at Rey apologetically as he moved to pour steamed milk into the cup sitting on the bar. “Sorry, peanut, can you give me a bit? I can’t think about too many things at once.”

Rey looked at the line that had formed behind the counter and her eyes widened. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She glanced back at her notes. “I guess I’ll just… Do this later.”

Ben stepped up to the counter as she finished speaking. The look that Finn turned on him was anything but the usual and he sighed. “What, Finn?”

“You’re good at chem, right?” Finn asked.

“I double-majored in it in college, so yes,” Ben said. “Why?”

Finn glanced over to where Rey sat and then looked back at Ben. “Can you help Rey? She’s stuck on a problem and I would do it but I really can’t with the line and—”

“What’s she doing?” Ben asked, though he already had a good idea from the conversation that he’d overheard.

“Protein synthesis,” Finn said. His eyes widened when Ben began to shake his head. “I’ll give you your drink on the house if you help her.” Ben just stared at him and Finn grimaced. “Okay, fine, I’ll give you your drink on the house for the next week if you help her.”

Ben raised his eyebrows. “Are you allowed to do that?”

“Sure,” Finn said. “I do at least a hundred-dollar hour during the lunch rush every day. No one will notice if I don’t charge one drink.”

“You really want me to help her, don’t you?” Ben asked.

“Yes,” Finn said. “I do.”

Ben swiped his card through the reader before Finn could cancel the order and took his drink. “No free drinks.”

“Does that mean you won’t—” Finn began, only to switch gears when the next customer stepped up to the counter. “Hi, welcome to Corellian Coffee. What can I get for you?”

Ben glanced at the door for a moment before shaking his head. He set his drink down on the counter next to Rey’s notes and she froze for a moment before looking up at him. The dark circles underneath her eyes gave him pause—the only person he’d seen looking more sleep-deprived that she did was himself.

For a moment, he couldn’t help but imagine what he must have looked like standing over her—he was tall, he knew that, and with his penchant for dressing in black and dark grey, he could cut a menacing figure when he wanted to.

To his surprise, her only response to his presence was to shake her head before she looked back at her notes. “Did you want something?” Exhaustion filled her voice, and he watched the pencil in her hand shake as she moved to write something on the sheet of paper in front of her.

“Catalytic hydrogenation or HBr in acetic acid,” Ben said. Rey looked up at him again, her eyes widening, and he took a sip from his drink before he spoke again. “If the reagent you’re using is benzyl chloroformate, then either of those would be a viable option for removing it.”

“And what if it’s not benzyl chloroformate?” Rey asked, turning her attention back to her notes. He watched her write down what he’d just said, her handwriting neat despite the slight trembling of her fingers.

“You would use trifluoroacetic acid in acetic acid to remove—” Ben began.

Rey cut him off. “Di- _tert-_ butyl dicarbonate!” She wrote something else in her notes and looked back up at him. “I knew I remembered that from somewhere. It’s piperidine for 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate, right?”

“You couldn’t remember catalytic hydrogenation or HBr in acetic acid, but you can remember that?” Ben asked.

“I did the reading over a month ago and we had the lecture on it the week before last,” she said. “I think I have more reason to remember it than you do.” She set her pencil down. “Why did you know that, anyway?”

It was an innocent question, Ben reminded himself as the part of him which rejected divulging any personal information to strangers rose to the surface. “I did my undergraduate honors thesis in chemistry on protein synthesis,” he said after an awkward pause. Rey laughed. “What?”

“I just figured it would’ve been on explosives or something like that,” Rey said.

“I did that too,” Ben said. “It was an independent study, though, not part of my thesis project.”

“Sure you did,” Rey said, laughing again. Her smile faded as she took in the expression on his face. “You’re actually serious.”

“I am,” Ben said.

 _Unfortunately,_ he added silently. That independent study had nearly gotten him expelled from the university where he got his undergraduate degrees and all but lost him his spot in the program he was currently more than halfway to finishing. He hadn’t been the only one involved, though, and the others faced much worse consequences than he did. It was only thanks to one well-timed (if embarrassing) voicemail that he’d escaped any real punishment for what had happened (well, the voicemail and a _generous_ donation on the part of his parents to help rebuild the lab where he’d worked that semester, but it was the former that had proven that he was largely innocent of any wrongdoing).

“That’s insane,” Rey said. “If they let my lab partner do that, half of campus would’ve been blown to pieces by now.” She bit her lip. “I wonder what department policy is on those types of projects.”

“Most schools have restrictions on them,” Ben said.

“Rightly so, if you ask me,” Rey said. “I don’t think teenage or twenty-something guys should be trusted with explosive chemicals. Well, guys or anyone, really.” She flushed then, not looking him in the eye. “I didn’t mean you, I’m sorry, it was—” Her apology was cut off by the sound of her phone ringing. She answered it, only to tense and pale even further. “I’ll be there in ten, I’m sorry—” She continued talking as she packed her things up, her speech growing increasingly more frantic as she shouldered her bag.

Her only goodbye to Ben was a nod of her head before she was out the door. He looked back over his shoulder at Finn, who was wiping down a mug as he watched Rey’s figure disappear outside of the windows. The lunch rush had died down in the time that Ben was talking to Rey, and the shorter man set the mug aside as he made eye contact with Ben.

“Does she do that a lot?” Ben asked.

“Disappear like that?” Finn asked. “Yeah. It goes with the territory.” There was a heaviness in his voice, something that Ben would’ve called exhaustion if it weren’t tinged with something harder. Finn shook his head. “She’ll say thank you the next time she sees you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said. “It was just a little chemistry.”

“Protein synthesis isn’t ‘just a little chemistry’ and you know it,” Finn said. He sighed. “Thank you, though.”

“Didn’t you just say she would thank me?” Ben asked.

“I did, but I’m thanking you too,” Finn said. “There aren’t enough hours in a day for all the things that girl needs to do. Without your help, she’d be even more behind than she already is.”

Ben glanced at his watch rather than respond. “Speaking of being behind, I need to get back to the lab. I have some samples to run.”

“You’re getting a free drink tomorrow,” Finn said. “If you want to argue with me then you can leave a four-dollar tip.”

“Save it. Expressions of gratitude disgust me,” Ben threw over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OHHHHH BOY TLJ WAS INTENSE AND I AM //LIVING// BECAUSE OF IT.
> 
> Aside from that: This chapter is still shorter than I'd like but such is life until we're properly into the meat of things (which is coming. I know I keep saying that, but it is). Also, my laptop (my tiny, precious laptop which I got not long after I first saw TFA) crashed last month and I found out this past week that it is beyond saving, so I had to open it up and get everything off my hard drive, including everything to do with this story. Alas. Fortunately my dinosaur of a high school laptop is still functional and she's been my saving grace these last few weeks and will continue to be until I replace tiny laptop before I go back to school (for my last semester of college good freaking lord).
> 
> The protein chemistry stuff is real—I did an independent study on it in high school the year after I took organic chemistry as an actual class and pulled everything directly from my notes. I don't know where it would fit into a college program but we're going to pretend it does. No, none of that is gibberish to me, yes, I still have a decent understanding of chemistry even though neither of my majors have anything to do with it, and yes, protein synthesis is actually incredibly difficult to do in a lab because it's really hard to stop the reaction at the appropriate point—most of the time it just keeps going and you get past the protein and wind up with something else entirely.
> 
> Also, ten points to anyone who can pick out my favorite line of this chapter lol.
> 
> As expected, the movie has brought me back to life online, so if you'd like to talk fics or scream over TLJ or whatever, you can find me over on Tumblr at reynoverthegalaxy.
> 
> Until next time, folks (which should be soon(ish), but I have to get the first few chapters of an original work revised and posted first because I've been promising that to those readers since... 2015? or something like that, and it's finally almost done).


	5. Chapter 5

For all that he’d been incredibly annoyed by her the first few times he’d seen her, Ben had come to the conclusion that Rey might not be so bad. Sure, she was a bit too animated for his taste most of the time, but she seemed to be dedicated to her work (though not as dedicated as he was, because nobody else was willing to put their health at risk just to get more work done, and most people actually had some semblance of a social life) and she was clearly intelligent.

He had himself prepared to talk to her on his first visit to Corellian Coffee after he helped her with her chemistry homework, but her spot at the counter was curiously empty. That day it was easy to shrug it off—she had classes, and their last encounter had taught him that sometimes she had to leave suddenly—and he took his drink and slowly made the walk back to the lab.

The next time he went to the coffee shop, it was on a day where he’d seen her before—not that it mattered, he wasn’t going to get coffee just to see her, that would be ridiculous—but yet again, she wasn’t sitting in her chair. It wasn’t unoccupied, but he didn’t recognize the blonde woman who sat there, and after a brief conversation with Finn, he went on his way.

The third time, he really wasn’t going for her. He could feel a migraine on the edges of his mind, and caffeine and ibuprofen seemed like the only logical combination to help him deal with it until he could head back to his dark apartment. Sure, there was another coffee shop significantly to the lab that he could have gone to, but fresh air never hurt anyone, right?

He cast a furtive glance toward the counter nearest the register as he stood in line, only to find that Rey’s chair was once again missing the slender brunette. The store was fairly quiet, so it wasn’t surprising that the seat was empty—most people avoided sitting right by the entrance to the area behind the counter unless they were friends with the barista—but still.

Ben resisted asking any questions that day—his head hurt enough, and he really did need to get back to the lab and try to get something done before he headed home—but he couldn’t resist one last glance over his shoulder at Rey’s usual seat as he left the coffee shop.

When he went into the coffee shop that Friday to find that her seat was empty once again, he couldn’t help himself. It was just after the early lunch rush and there was no one in line behind him as Finn made his drink, so when the shorter man passed the cup across the counter, Ben cleared his throat.

“No company today?” he asked, making sure not to look in the direction of Rey’s chair as he spoke.

Finn shrugged. “People are busy.”

“Rey’s not having trouble with chemistry again, is she?” Ben asked. “Because I can help if that’s the issue.”

Finn stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. “No, she’s fine. Well, she’s not _fine_ , but chemistry isn’t the issue.” He scowled, the expression out of place compared to his usual easygoing grin. “She’s a mechanic and her boss is an asshole. He’s had her working overtime for the last week.”

Ben raised his eyebrows. “She’s a mechanic?”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “She’s not actually a chemistry major, she’s just minoring in it. Her major is mechanical engineering. She loves cars.”

“Really?” Ben asked, his mind flashing to the pristine silver 1962 Millennium Falcon that he knew sat in a garage less than twenty miles away.

Finn nodded. “She’s been interested in them since we were kids. I swear if you gave her the parts she could build you anything you asked for.”

The door opened behind Ben and he stepped aside as other customers entered the store. After a moment of internal debate, he took the seat that he had come to think of as Rey’s and sipped from his cup. There was work that he could do back in the lab, but he was at the point where he really just needed to focus on finishing what was left of his dissertation and revising the rest of it, so it didn’t really matter if he procrastinated by looking at more samples or sat there and enjoyed his coffee.

The store filled up again as Ben sat there—the lunch rush came in two parts, one for those people who ate lunch in the late morning and another for those who took their lunch break in the afternoon—and he took his time finishing his Shot In The Dark, puzzling over his thoughts as he drank.

He didn’t know why he was so curious about Rey or so bothered by her absence. She was just an undergrad, another early twenty-something in the sea of faces around him, and what happened to her had absolutely no bearing on his life. He would finish his dissertation and defend at the end of the academic year, and then he would move on to his residency and move on with his life. She would continue on for another year of college—at least, he assumed she wasn’t going to be done yet—and they would go their separate ways.

Still, there was something about her that he couldn’t get out of his mind, and as hard as he tried to push the thoughts away, there was a part of him that reveled in it. It would certainly make his mother happy that he was thinking about something—someone—other than his work for once.

That thought was enough to make him drain what was left in his cup and stand up. It didn’t matter that she was smart or that his stomach turned over slightly every time she smiled—he needed to finish his dissertation, and nothing could distract him. Nothing _would_ distract him.

He went back to the lab and threw himself into the dissertation chapter that he was working on. There would be months of revision before he defended, but he wanted to have the entire paper completed by the end of the following month, and there was still plenty to do. His habit of overworking himself had turned into a double-edged sword—rather than not having enough data, he almost had too much, and making sense of all of it was taking longer than he’d expected.

He worked into the evening, well past when the other doctoral students had packed up their things, taken their coats, and left the lab. It wasn’t until his stomach growled angrily that he pulled himself away from his work and grabbed his coat.

There was a Chinese restaurant close by that did the quickest takeout on campus, and he made his way there, absentmindedly scrolling on his phone as he walked. There weren’t many students out, what with the chill in the mid-November air, which made the girl sitting on a bench outside the engineering building noticeable despite Ben’s inattention.

He looked up out of habit more than anything else, only to stop at the sight of Rey. She was huddled in a sweatshirt and a coat that looked to be about three sizes too big for her, her head bent over a textbook. As he watched, she lifted her head and covered her mouth with her hand, though it didn’t do much to hide her yawn. Even from his faraway vantage point, he could tell that she was even paler than she had been a few weeks ago, and she hadn’t made any effort to hide the dark circles and bags under her eyes.

She closed her eyes, her shoulders moving with each deep breath, and Ben clenched his fists in his pockets. If Finn was right—if it was her asshole boss making her look that way—then Ben wanted to punch the man in the face. Someone as bright as Rey should have never looked half-dead from exhaustion, and it was with that thought in mind that he took a step forward. It wasn’t like him to offer help to anyone, but as he’d demonstrated with his earlier willingness to aid her in completing her chemistry work, Rey wasn’t _anyone_.

He didn’t take another step, though. The door to the engineering building opened and a familiar short girl with dark hair—Rachel? Ruth? Rose? Yes, that was it, _Rose_ —walked out. She stopped in front of Rey, who closed her textbook, tucked it into her bag, and offered up a tired smile.

Ben wasn’t close enough to hear what Rose was saying, but from the way that she was waving her hands and the resigned expression on Rey’s face, he could only conclude that it had something to do with how she was taking care of herself. A few moments later, Rose grabbed Rey’s hands and pulled the taller girl to her feet. Rey swayed for a moment before Rose wrapped her arm around Rey’s waist, and once she was steady, they started toward the sidewalk where Ben stood.

That Rey was no longer alone gave him some reassurance, and with a last glance at the pair, he resumed the walk to the restaurant. They didn’t need to see him standing there, didn’t need to wonder why he was watching Rey so intently, and he needed to get another five pages written that night. While that meant he would probably be in the lab until at least ten, he welcomed the distraction.

Anything was better than dwelling on the mental image of Rey’s tired face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol at me saying that these chapters will get longer—they will at some point, but this clearly isn't it. I don't know why they're so short, except for the fact that Rey and Ben don't really have a significant relationship to speak of right now except for his fascination with her, and so I don't have a ton to write. 
> 
> I posted the first chapter of a musician!AU yesterday (title: looking for the map that leads me home) even though I don't need more things to work on, so check that out if you're in the mood for more modern!AUs of these idiots. I should really be doing marketing notes to prep for class on Monday (break's almost over, ugh), but I'm going to go work on the next chapter of that now and it may or may not be going up this evening depending on how much I get done. 
> 
> Also, I got a new tiny laptop (I refer to them as "tiny laptops" because they're 12-inch screens compared to the 15.6-inch on my dinosaur of a Vaio and thus, tiny) and my big laptop is nicknamed Vastra (don't ask me why, it just felt right) and I think that new tiny laptop might have to be BB-9E because it's small and dark and yet somehow adorable. I'm not sorry.


End file.
